You need a social media marketing plan!

You're on social media to sell something or spread awareness. You can just jump on the social media bandwagon and feel your way along, or you can go in with a plan.

With your social media marketing plan, you should target the right audience on the appropriate social platform at the right time. You should also have a plan of where to get your content and appropriately measure your analytics and efforts.

DEFINE YOUR TARGET CUSTOMER

Building personas for your core audience can help improve the way you solve social media challenges for your customers.

• Vervocity’s target audience is Steve
• Steve is middle management for a small- to medium-sized business
• He probably golfs several times a month … just sayin’
• He’s looking for ways to streamline his processes that will benefit both his team and their clients
• He knows that they don’t need printed invoices, but he’s looking for a way to put paperwork in front of everyone in digital form
• He also knows that they need a better website that meets the client demands and triggers sales conversions

CHOOSE THE RIGHT SOCIAL NETWORKS

Since VI specializes in Social Media Management, we’re on all the platforms, so we can experiment and try new things.

You should be a little more selective when deciding where to invest your time and effort. Not every platform is a good fit for your client persona, so let's break them down.

I want to talk a little bit about the most popular platforms and when I'm done you can let me know if you have any questions about the others!

Facebook:

99% of people only see your posts in their news feeds. No one is really visiting your page.

Make sure you have a very recognizable profile picture, so people know who you are when you're posting and commenting. Don't worry about your cover photo too much though. You can update it every once and a while, but remember, no one's really seeing your page.

Make sure you have a really well-written "about us" section with lots of details about your company.

I suggest taking at least an hour at the beginning of each week to think through your posts for the week. Use the Facebook scheduling tool to get them lined up. Make sure you're posting in a variety of ways ... photos, video, links, text, fun, serious, etc. I'll talk a little later about resources for this content.

--------------- Facebook Live ----------------

Since the beginning of Facebook Live in August of 2015, there has been a 700% growth in video views.

So who here knows how to watch live videos?

1. If a friend of yours or a page you like goes live it will show up in your newsfeed directly.
2. To browse from your Facebook app on your phone, go to your home menu page, just type ‘live’ in the search box at the top of the page. Touch the video category and you’ll see recent live videos from friends and groups you’re in. Below that you’ll see any videos that are live currently or recently live.
3. If you’re on a computer (not your phone) you can also visit https://www.facebook.com/livemap to see everything that's currently live.

For those orgs like the YWCA or Madonna House, you could use Facebook Live for community events or to show off your volunteers at work. If you are a company like MS Communications, you could take several minutes to answer questions about your services or give tips or benefits to using your services.

--------------- Facebook Paid Ads ------------------

Let's talk about paid ads and promoting your page. I've posted a Guide to Facebook Advertising at https://vervocity.io/guide-to-facebook-advertising/ and it tells you specifically how to do it.

You can boost a post or promote your page, but there's a lot of customization that you can take advantage of including targeting specific audiences by age, location, keywords, and more.

I suggest you consider paid ads for posts that are getting a lot of response, for giveaways, for events that you'd like people to know about, and for sales. You can invest as much or as little money as you'd like. I see clients that spend $20 on a campaign and others that spend $500 on a campaign. Your budget is up to you.

Twitter:

Common uses for Twitter include ...

1. Learning about products and services
2. Voicing opinions on products and services
3. Customer service
4. And here in the Midwest, the primary use is for sports and breaking news

Twitter users are 3 times more likely to follow brands than Facebook users.

More than half of all Twitter users never post any updates, so it’s very important that you are keyword heavy and hashtag heavy in your tweets.

They’re also watching for video tweets. Video tweets grew by 50% in 2016. You are limited to 2 minutes and 20 seconds time length, so be creative with your cell phone to get people’s attention.

Instagram or Snapchat?

Both Instagram and Snapchat (and Facebook) use stories. Basically your stories are a personal feed that shows your recent activity.

On Instagram, users can like and comment, respond to stories, and watch Instagram Live sessions. You can directly message customers, too. Your posts stay visible forever, but your stories disappear at the end of 24 hours.

On Snapchat, your engagement is more on a one-on-one level. You can respond to a story or send it directly to a friend. Your "snaps" that you send individuals expire in seconds, but your stories expire in 24 hours.

Instagram makes it very easy to find new accounts to follow and interact with, while Snapchat relies on a word-of-mouth.

Any questions about Pinterest, LinkedIn, or YouTube?

I don't think Pinterest is a good fit for any of the attendees here. It's great if you have products to showcase and sell.

I believe every business should have a LinkedIn page for networking purposes and a YouTube account to share videos.

Best times to post:

Giveaways:

You can run your contest right from a post for free or you can use a 3rd party app to collect email addresses. Most 3rd party apps charge $29/mo or more, but it you want to build a database of potential clients resources like ShortStack, Heyo, or WishPond can help.

Any contest you run should have contest rules. It should state who can enter, how to enter, prize information, and a disclaimer that releases Facebook and yourself from liability.

I recommend putting your contest rules on a page on your website. Then in your contest post, you can put a link to them. If you absolutely have to, you could put the rules in a comment under your contest post.

Consider promoting your contest post with a paid ad to extend the reach. If you have 100 Facebook fans, your average reach is probably 20 people, but if you boost the post, you might reach 200.

RESEARCH TOPICS AND RESOURCES

Compile a list of resources that you can draw from including advice columns, bloggers that talk on topics in your field, professional societies, reputable new sources, and more. Bookmark them and look to their websites and Facebook pages for content, facts, and statistics that you can share. It's a best practice to tell your followers where you got the information, so be sure to include something like (Source: The Society for ___).

Keyword research is key for finding good content to aggregate. Make a list of keywords/keyword phrases that people might be searching for in regards to your organization. Keep your list handy each week and plug them into Google and Buzzsumo to search for relevant content. Buzzsumo is a great place to go for trending topics.

Memes:

Create your own memes at https://imgflip.com/memegenerator ... you can use the images they already have or upload your own complete with custom text.

Graphics:

Use Canva.com to create your own graphics. It allows you to use provided images and clip art combined with fun headlines and custom text. Or upload your own photo and add text and clip art images on top. It's also great for creating posters, cards, email headers, and more.

Photography

Don't just take any photo you see on the internet for your public posts. You have some options ...

1. Use the "Tools" button in your Google Image search to narrow down the search to photos "labeled for reuse".
2. https://unsplash.com/
3. https://picjumbo.com/
4. http://www.freeimages.com/
5. https://pixabay.com/

PLAN YOUR CONTENT CALENDAR

It's important to collect your thoughts well in advance of scheduling your posts. I recommend using an Excel spreadsheet with tabs along the bottom for each month.

In one column, populate all important holidays or fun days of celebration like National Teacher day. You can find a list of fun holidays at http://www.wincalendar.com/Holiday-Calendar-with-Today.

In the other column, start brainstorming your posts.

It's important to also make a list of all your products or services that you'd like to showcase and decide on months and dates for them to be featured.

MEASURE YOUR PROGRESS AND SHARE THE RESULTS

Social media is one of those things that you can't just do it and walk away. You need to know what's working and not working and you can see that in the analytics.

Facebook and Twitter allow you to pull analytics reports. I suggest you track ...

1. Overall likes or number of followers
2. Impressions (the number of times a post from your page is displayed)
3. Mentions and shares
4. Your top performing posts of the month

Take the time to look at your competitors while you're at it. Look at their page at least once a month. Track their overall number of fans and look at their most successful and least successful posts.

Take a half an hour at the end of the month to put the numbers in a spreadsheet for reporting. Then you can send an email to your team, your volunteers, your owner, or your manager with the spreadsheet attached. Your email will be a great opportunity to give team members a shout out for participation over the course of the month. Tell them it's nice to see them comment on and share your content.